Potato chips are a common snack product. Potato chips can have flat surfaces that can be formed by urging a potato through flat blades arranged in a parallel orientation, thereby forming a flat slice of the potato. The potato slice can be fried until it is crunchy, thereby providing the potato chip for consumption. Snack manufacturers provide potato chips in a variety of styles, and in a multitude of flavors.
Other potato chips can have wavy (also called “marcelled”) shapes. Marcelled style potato chips have a repeating series of peaks and troughs. Marcelled style potato chips can be manufactured using potato slicing machines fitted with a plurality of blades having cooperating wavy cutting edges.
Another snack product, related to potato chips, is known as a potato stick. Potato sticks are generally narrow, stick-like, thin strips of a potato. Typically, potato sticks measure less than 0.5 inches in width and approximately 2.0 inches to 5.0 inches in length. Potato sticks are manufactured in a manner similar to that of potato chips. Potatoes are urged through flat blades arranged in a parallel orientation, thereby forming a flat slice of potato. The resulting flat slice of potato is subsequently urged though grates, thereby cutting the flat slice of potato into sticklike strips.
Conventional flat potato sticks are undesirably fragile, and can break easily during storage and transport. Flat potato sticks are also not well suited for receive dips. With a thicker dip, in particular, flat potato sticks are known to break off and leave behind broken portions in the dip container.
There is a continuing need for a potato stick product having a shape that is more robust for storage and transport. Desirably, the potato stick product is configured to receive dips, and particularly thicker dips, without significant breakage.